Moulin Rouge! The Musical
★★★★☆ Can-Can do
Playhouse: Tue 22 Apr – Sat 14 June 2025
Review by Martin Gray
Spectacle, that’s what you get when you enter the world of Moulin Rouge! The Musical. The first thing you notice is that the neutral lighting of the Playhouse has been replaced by bordello red, and the boxes at either side of the stage have occupants – an illuminated windmill and an ornate elephant.
On stage, punters and players at the world-famous Moulin Rouge nightclub hover, looking out at the audience, meeting our gaze. A couple of can-can girls demonstrate their sword swallowing technique, eliciting gasps from real world audience members. Eventually a handsome young man appears, he gestures towards the massive illuminated theatre sign, and the real show begins.
Nate Landskroner (Christian). Pic Johan Persson
La Belle Époque, Montmartre, Paris! Where newly arrived American songwriter Christian – our curtain raiser – falls in with Bohemian playwright Toulouse-Lautrec and Argentinian tango dancer Santiago. And promptly falls in love with Satine, star of the Moulin Rouge nightclub, a palace of glittering delights but one in direct financial straits.
Owner and MC Harold asks her to seduce wealthy aristocrat the Duke of Monroth, persuade him to invest in the club. She agrees, but then she meets Christian…
go for the colour
Ah, where will it all end? Well, you’ve probably seen the 2001 Baz Luhrmann film on which this touring production is based, so know fine well how things turn out. So go for the colour in the performances, the sets, the costumes.
Give yourself over to a 19th-century Paris that never there was, a world in which starving artists look like they’ve stepped off the Las Vegas stage. It’s a place in which the songs used as the language of love include the likes of Children of the Revolution, Diamonds are Forever and Your Song.
A scene from Moulin Rouge. Pic Johan Persson
Moulin Rouge! Is the most jukebox of jukebox musicals, not only using the tunes from the film but several debuted in the years since, such as Firework, Chandelier and Shut Up and Dance.
The leads and ensemble do a fantastic job on the whole – the film’s one original number, Come What May, is a little underpowered – but the sheer number of songs is exhausting and frustrating; again and again a couple of lines of something great are thrown out, to be immediately succeeded by something else.
maximum poignancy
It’s a relief, and a treat, when a number gets a chance to breathe, such as Nature Boy, tenderly produced for maximum poignancy and beautifully sung by Kurt Kansley and Nate Landskroner as Toulouse-Lautrec and Christian respectively. And Firework from the elegant Satine, Verity Thompson, is suitably dazzling.
Thompson breaks hearts with the prettiest bout of TB you ever did see and Landskroner does well with the frankly wet Christian – the decision to change the character from Ewan McGregor’s film Englishman to an Ohio native means that the British Landskroner often sounds like a Disney prince.
Verity Thompson (Satine) and Nate Landskroner (Christian). Pic Johan Persson
In a show in which everyone is at the top of their game it seems unfair to single out a standout turn, but Cameron Blakely as Harold owns the stage every time he appears, the sheer fun actor and character are having evident. And that’s not just in the singing and dancing, his rehearsal scene involving a razor – Satine persuades the Duke to back the Bohemians’ play – is a hoot.
James Bryers keeps the dark Duke just the right side of pantomime. It is, though, a little unfortunate that there is a lot more chemistary between the Duke and Satine than between Satine and Christian.
disappointment
The only real disappointment of the show is that while we do get The Police’s classic Roxanne, beautifully rendered by Ben Ferguson’s band, the film’s heart-stopping tango is missing. With Santiago (the excellent Johnny Galeandro, stepping up from the ensemble) introduced as the best of dancers, it seemed certain we’d see him burn the floor with lover Nini (Kahlia Davis in a confident performance).
Johnny Galeandro (Santiago) and Kahlia Davis (Nini). Pic Johan Persson
Overall, this Australian production, beginning its world tour in Edinburgh, is a blast, dazzling from beginning to end. The script isn’t brilliant, with the central romantic connection a magical confection.
If you squint you can find themes of prostitution – Satine uses her body to lure in the Duke; the Bohemians preach of Revolution but are happy to take an aristocrat’s money – but really, it’s about the song and the dance, the colour and the light. And so far as that goes, Moulin Rouge! The Musical is hard to beat.
Running time: Two hours and 45 minutes (including one interval)
Playhouse, 18 – 22 Greenside Place, EH1 3AA. Phone booking: 0844 871 3014.
Tue 22 April – Sat 14 June 2025
Mon – Sat: 7.30pm; Mats: Thurs, Sat: 2.30pm.
Tickets and details: Book here.
Cameron Blakely (Harold Zidler) Pic Johan Persson
ENDS
